*• 


Ghetto  and  Emancipation 

By  Salo  Baron 


\ 


Reprinted  from  the  June  1928  issue  of 
The  Menorah  Journal 
63  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York  City 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2014 


https://archive.org/details/ghettoemancipatiOObaro 


Ghetto  and  Emancipation 

Shall  We  Revise  the  traditional  ^Jiewl 
By  Salo  Baron 

I  1 1  HE  history  of  the  Jews  in  the  last  century  and  a  half  has  turned  about 
1     one  central  fact:  that  of  Emancipation.    But  what  has  Emancipation 
really  meant  to  the  Jew?    The  generally  accepted  view  has  it  that 
be*  ore  the  French  Revolution  the  Jews  of  Europe  lived  in  a  state  of  extreme 
wretchedness  under  medieval  conditions,  subject  to  incessant  persecution 
and  violence,  but  that  after  the  Revolution  a  new  era  of  enlightenment  came 
to  the  nations,  winch  forthwith  struck  off  the  bonds  that  fettered  the  Jew  and 
Dpened  up  the  gates  that  shut  him  off  from  civilized  life.    Prisoner  in  the 
GUietto,  denied  access  to  the  resources  and  activities  of  Western  society,  dis- 
;orted  intellectually,  morally,  spiritually  by  centuries  of  isolation  and  tor- 
;ure,  the  Jew  was  set  free  by  the  Emancipation.    In  the  words  of  Graetz: 
'  The  Revolution  was  a  judgment  which  in  one  day  atoned  for  the  sins  of  a 
housand  years,  and  which  hurled  into  the  dust  all  who,  at  the  expense 
•f  justice  and  religion,  had  created  new  grades  of  society.    A  new  day  of  the 
x>rd  had  come  'to  humiliate  all  the  proud  and  high,  and  to  raise  up  the 
|Dwly.'    For  the  Jews,  too,  the  most  abject  and  despised  people  in  European 
ociety,  the  day  of  redemption  and  liberty  was  to  dawn  after  their  long 
lavery  among  the  nations  of  Europe.    It  is  noteworthy  that  England  and 
france,  the  two  European  countries  which  first  expelled  the  Jews,  were  the 
rst  to  reinstate  them  in  the  rights  of  humanity.    What  Mendelssohn  had 
lought  possible  at  some  distant  time,  and  what  had  been  the  devout  wish 
:  Dohm  and  Diez,  those  defenders  of  the  Jews,  was  realized  in  France  with 
most  magical  rapidity." 

l 


2098471 


2 


THE  MENORAH  JOURNAL 


Emancipation,  in  the  judgment  of  Graetz,  Philippson,  Dubnow  and 
other  historians,  was  the  dawn  of  a  new  day  after  a  nightmare  of  the  deepest 
horror,  and  this  view  has  been  accepted  as  completely  true  by  Jews,  rabbis, 
scholars  and  laymen,  throughout  the  Western  world.  It  is  in  terms  of  this 
complete  contrast  between  the  black  of  the  Jewish  Middle  Ages  and  the 
white  of  the  post-Emancipation  period  that  most  generalizations  about 
the  progress  of  the  Jews  in  modern  times  are  made.  Prophecies  as  to  tlie 
future  of  the  Jew  are  also  of  necessity  colored  by  an  optimism  engendered 
by  this  view.  If  in  so  short  a  time  the  Jew  has  risen  from  such  great  depths, 
is  it  not  logical  to  hope  that  a  few  more  years  will  bring  him  perfect  freedom? 

Unfortunately,  in  the  light  of  present  historical  knowledge,  the  con- 
trast on  which  these  hopes  are  built  is  open  to  great  qualification.  A  more 
critical  examination  of  the  supposed  gains  after  the  Revolution  and  fuller 
information  concerning  the  Jewish  Middle  Ages  both  indicate  that  we  mhy 
have  to  revaluate  radically  our  notions  of  Jewish  progress  under  Western 
liberty.  A  wider,  less  prejudiced  knowledge  of  the  actual  conditions  of  the 
Jew  in  the  period  of  their  deepest  decline* — during  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries — seems  to  necessitate  such  a  revision.  If  the 
status  of  the  Jew  (his  privileges,  opportunities,  and  actual  life)  in  those  cen- 
turies was  in  fact  not  as  low  as  we  are  in  the  habit  of  thinking,  then  the 
miracle  of  Emancipation  was  not  so  great  as  we  supposed. 


TN  the  Jewish  "Middle  Ages,"  it  is  said,  the  Jew  did  not  have  "equal 
rights."  But  to  say  that  pre-Emancipation  Jewry  did  not  have  "equal 
rights "  with  the  rest  of  the  population  does  not  mean  that  Jewry  was  the 
subject  of  special  unfavorable  discrimination.  The  simple  fact  is  that  there 
was  no  such  thing  then  as  "equal  rights."  In  this  period  the  absolute 
State,  like  the  medieval  State,  was  still  largely  built  on  the  corporations. 
The  corporations  were  legally  recognized  groups  of  people  belonging  to  dif- 
ferent corporate  organizations,  each  with  distinct  rights  and  duties.  The 
corporation  of  the  nobility  had  its  rights  and  duties,  among  them  that  of 
administration  and  defense  of  the  country.  The  clergy  was  entrusted  with 
spiritual  and  cultural  affairs.  While  mercenaries  and  standing  armies  had 
to  some  extent  replaced  feudal  military,  and  the  Church  had  begun  to  give 
way  to  secular  agencies  of  culture,  the  traditional  powers  of  both  were  still 

*  The  Jewish  "Middle  Ages,"  as  Zunz  soundly  remarks,  are  not  identical  with  the  "Middle  Ages" 
of  Europe.  The  "Dark  Ages"  of  the  Jew  are  roughly  comprised  by  the  centuries  immediately  preceding 
the  French  Revolution,  the  sixteenth,  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries;  the  "Dark  Ages"  of  Europe 
were  really  a  time  of  relative  prosperity  and  high  civilization  for  the  Jew.  Until  the  Crusades  a  majority 
of  Jewry  lived  under  Islamic  rule  in  relatively  good  circumstances,  while  even  Western  Jewry  was  far 
superior  to  its  Christian  neighbors  in  culture  and  economic  status.  Only  in  the  last  centuries  of  the 
European  Middle  Ages  did  the  Jewish  Middle  Ages  set  in.  The  decline  was  accelerated  and  continued 
during  the  religious  wars,  particularly  in  the  countries  of  the  counter-Reformation. 


I 


GHETTO  AND  EMANCIPATION 


3 


recognized  down  to  the  very  opening  of  the  Revolution.  The  urban  citi- 
zenry (not  the  peasant  or  proletarian  mass)  formed  the  real  third  estate,  and 
its  chief  function  was  the  maintenance  of  economic  life  and  the  replenish- 
ment of  the  State  treasury.  Below  these  corporations  in  large  was  the 
peasant  body,  the  vast  majority  of  the  population,  in  many  countries  held 
in  complete  serfdom,  and  everywhere  with  few  rights  and  many  duties. 

It  is,  then,  not  surprising  and  certainly  no  evidence  of  discrimination 
that  the  Jews  did  not  have  "equal  rights" — no  one  had  them.  Moreover, 
it  may  be  said  that  if  the  Jews  had  fewer  rights  than  nobles  and  clergy,  their 
duties  were  hardly  ever  greater.  Their  legal  status  was  comparable  to  that 
of  the  third  estate,  and,  indeed,  they  were  largely  an  urban  group.  In  some 
periods  they  had  equal,  in  some,  fewer,  in  some,  more  rights  than  other 
town  inhabitants.  At  the  very  opening  of  the  modern  period,  Jewish  rights 
after  a  long  decline  happened  to  be  on  the  average  lower  than  those  of  their 
urban  Christian  neighbors,  yet  even  then  they  belonged  to  the  privileged 
minority  which  included  nobles,  clergy  and  urban  citizenry. 

Certainly  the  Jews  had  fewer  duties  and  more  rights  than  the  great 
bulk  of  the  population — the  enormous  mass  of  peasants,  the  great  majority 
of  whom  were  little  more  than  appurtenances  of  the  soil  on  which  they  were 
born.  When  the  land  was  sold  they  were  included  in  the  sale.  None  could 
move  away  without  the  master's  consent.  Like  cattle  they  were  glebae  ad- 
script^ but  less  free  than  cattle  to  mate.  The  larger  part  of  their  produce 
went  to  landlords  or  to  the  State.  On  every  important  occasion— at  a 
birth,  marriage  or  death — the  landlord  had  rights  to  be  considered.  In 
every  legal  contest  his  was  the  only  competent  court.  Seen  by  La  Bruyere, 
the  peasants  in  1689  even  in  comparatively  happy  France  were  "savage- 
looking  beings  .  .  .  black,  livid,  and  sunburnt  .  .  .  they  seem  capable  of 
articulation  and,  when  they  stand  erect,  they  display  human  lineaments. 
They  are  in  fact  men.  They  retire  at  night  into  their  dens  where  they  live 
on  black  bread,  water,  and  roots." 

In  contrast  to  this  class,  the  Jews  were  well  off.  They  could  move 
freely  from  place  to  place  with  few  exceptions,  they  could  marry  whomever 
they  wanted,  they  had  their  own  courts,  and  were  judged  according  to  their 
own  laws.  Even  in  mixed  cases  with  non-Jews,  not  the  local  tribunal  but 
usually  a  special  judge  appointed  by  the  king  or  some  high  official  had  com- 
petence. Sometimes,  as  in  Poland,  the  Jews  even  exercised  influence  in  the 
nomination  of  such  a  judex  judaeorum  for  mixed  cases. 

The  disabilities  under  which  medieval  Jewry  suffered  have  been  made 
much  of.  Jews  could  not  own  land,  or  join  most  of  the  guilds,  and  were 
thereby  effectively  barred  from  certain  branches  of  craft  and  commerce. 
But  these  were,  in  legal  theory,  restrictions  made  on  the  privileges  granted 
them,  and  not  limitations  on  any  general  rule  of  equal  rights.    Every  cor- 


4 


THE  MENORAH  JOURNAL 


poration  had  similar  restrictions,  and  in  this  respect  the  Jews'  case  was  no 
different  in  principle  from  that  of  other  privileged  groups. 

True,  the  Jews  were  servi  earner ae  (servants  of  the  Treasury),  but  this 
status  can  neither  in  theory  nor  in  practice  be  compared  with  that  of  the 
peasants,  who  were  serfs  of  their  local  masters.  If  one  may  introduce  a 
modern  legal  distinction  not  thoroughly  applicable  to  medieval  conditions, 
this  difference  becomes  clear.  The  peasants  were  really  serfs  in  civil  law, 
that  is,  they  belonged  to  a  private  owner  as  a  kind  of  private  property. 
The  Jews  were,  so  to  speak,  serfs  in  public  law,  and  as  such  belonged  to  the 
ruler  as  representative  or  embodiment  of  the  State,  and  they  were  inherited 
by  his  successor  in  office  through  public  law.  The  man  elected  to  the  Im- 
perial throne  was  their  master,  and  not  the  private  heir  of  the  former  Em- 
peror's private  estates,  or  the  heir  even  of  those  German  countries  which, 
like  Austria,  he  could  claim  on  dynastic  grounds.  Now  we  ought  not  to  for- 
get that  even  today  we  are,  in  effect,  serfs  of  the  State  in  public  law,  not- 
withstanding all  theories  of  personal  rights,  natural  rights  of  citizens,  and  the 
sovereignty  of  the  people.  In  fact,  even  more  so  today  than  formerly.  The 
State  can  levy  taxes  little  short  of  confiscatory;  it  can  send  us  to  war;  in 
democratic  countries,  and  even  more  so  in  Fascist  Italy  or  Soviet  Russia,  it  is 
complete  master  of  all  lives  and  property.  This  situation,  expressed  in 
medieval  terminology,  is  a  serf  relationship  applying  to  all  citizens.  The 
Jew  then,  insofar  as  he  was  servus  camerae,  was  in  substantially  the  same 
position  all  modern  free  citizens  are  in.  In  a  word,  the  difference  in  the 
legal  status  between  Jew  and  peasant  was  what  David  Hume,  writing  in  that 
period  on  the  condition  of  ancient  slaves,  called  the  difference  between  "do- 
mestic slavery  ''  and  "civil  subjection."  The  first,  he  recognized,  is  "more 
cruel  and  oppressive  than  any  civil  subjection  whatsoever." 

The  Jews'  status  as  servant  of  the  Emperor  only,  which  had  been  op- 
posed in  vain  by  Thomas  Aquinas  and  Pope  Innocent  III  (these  had  it  that 
he  was  the  property  of  the  different  kings  and  princes  in  Christendom),  was 
based  on  the  erroneous  theory  that  the  Holy  Roman  Emperors  of  the  Ger- 
man nation  were  direct  successors  of  the  ancient  Roman  Emperors  and  thus 
inherited  the  authority  exercised  over  Jewish  prisoners  by  Vespasian  and 
Titus  after  Jerusalem's  fall.  Vespasian  had  levied  the  fiscus  Judaicus, 
and  the  medieval  rulers  levied  a  similar  tax — Schutzgeld  (protection  money). 
In  practice,  the  theory  of  Imperial  overlordship  of  Jewry  was  occasionally  a 
disadvantage,  as  when  the  argument  was  made  in  fourteenth  century  France 
that  these  subjects  of  a  foreign  monarch  be  expelled  from  the  country.  But 
in  general  it  was  a  profitable  theory,  for  the  Emperor  often  did  provide  the 
protection  for  which  Jewry  paid,  as  when  he  used  his  considerable  power  on 
their  behalf  in  several  of  the  German  free  cities, 

Indeed,  the  status  of  the  Jew  in  the  Middle  Ages  implied  certain  priv- 


GHETTO  AND  EMANCIPATION 


5 


ileges  which  they  no  longer  have  under  the  modern  State.  Like  the  other 
corporations,  the  Jewish  community  enjoyed  full  internal  autonomy.  Com- 
plex, isolated,  in  a  sense  foreign,  it  was  left  more  severely  alone  by  the  State 
than  most  other  corporations.  Thus  the  Jewish  community  of  pre-Revolu- 
tionary  days  had  more  competence  over  its  members  than  the  modern 
Federal,  State,  and  Municipal  governments  combined.  Education,  admin- 
istration of  justice  between  Jew  and  Jew,  taxation  for  communal  and  State 
purposes,  health,  markets,  public  order,  were  all  within  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  community-corporation,  and,  in  addition,  the  Jewish  community  was 
the  fountain-head  of  social  work  of  a  quality  generally  superior  to  that  out- 
side Jewry.  The  Jewish  self-governing  bodies  issued  special  regulations  and 
saw  to  their  execution  through  their  own  officials.  Statute  was  reinforced 
by  religious,  supernatural  sanctions  as  well  as  by  coercive  public  opinion 
within  the  group.  For  example,  a  Jew  put  in  Cherem  by  a  Jewish  court  was 
practically  a  lost  man,  and  the  Cherem  was  a  fairly  common  means  of  im- 
posing the  will  of  the  community  on  the  individual.  All  this  self-governing 
apparatus  disappeared,  o*f  course,  when  the  Revolution  brought  "equal 
rights  "  to  European  Jewry. 

4  PHASE  of  this  corporate  existence  generally  regarded  by  emancipated 


Jewry  as  an  unmitigated  evil  was  the  Ghetto.  But  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  the  Ghetto  grew  up  voluntarily  as  a  result  of  Jewish  self- 
government,  and  it  was  only  in  a  later  development  that  public  law  interfered 
and  made  it  a  legal  compulsion  for  all  Jews  to  live  in  a  secluded  district  in 
which  no  Christian  was  allowed  to  dwell.  To  a  certain  extent  the  Ghetto  in 
this  technical  sense  was  a  fruit  of  the  counter-Reformation,  having  its 
origin  in  Pope  Paul  IV's  Bull,  Cum  nimis  absurdam,  issued  against  the  Jews 
in  1555,  and  in  its  extreme  application  it  was,  of  course,  obnoxious.  In 
origin,  however,  the  Ghetto  was  an  institution  that  the  Jews  had  found  it  to 
their  interest  to  create  themselves.  Various  corporations  in  the  State  had 
separate  streets  of  their  own;  the  shoemakers,  for  example,  or  the  bakers, 
would  live  each  in  one  neighborhood.  In  addition  to  their  growing  mutual 
interest  as  a  corporation  of  money  dealers,  the  Jews  wished  to  be  near  the 
Synagogue,  then  a  social  as  well  as  a  religious  center.  Furthermore,  they 
saw  in  the  Ghetto  a  means  of  defense.  Thus,  it  was  the  Jews  themselves  who 
secured  from  Bishop  Rudiger  in  Spires  in  1084  the  right  to  settle  in  a  sep- 
arate district  and  to  erect  a  wall  around  it.  There  were  locks  inside  the 
Ghetto  gates  in  most  cases  before  there  were  locks  outside.  The  Ghetto,  in 
the  non-technical  sense,  was  then  a  district  in  which  most  Jews  and  few 
Gentiles  lived  long  before  the  legal  compulsion  which  came  when  Christian 
authority  found  it  necessary  to  mark  the  Jews  off  by  residence  district,  in 
order  to  prevent  complete  social  intercourse  between  them  and  Christians. 


6 


THE  MENORAH  JOURNAL 


In  this  Ghetto,  before  compulsion  came  and  after,  Jewry  was  enabled 
to  live  a  full,  rounded  life,  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  population,  under  a 
corporate  governing  organization.  The  JeW,  indeed,  had  in  effect  a  kind  of 
territory  and  State  of  his  own  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  and  early  modern 
period.  The  advantages  of  this  autonomy,  lost  through  the  Emancipation, 
were  certainly  considerable;  they  must  have  contributed  in  large  part  to- 
ward the  preservation  of  Jewry  as  a  distinct  nationality. 

Again,  the  terrors  of  the  Inquisition  play  a  large  part  in  all  descriptions 
of  the  state  of  medieval  Jewry.  Its  horrors  have  been  fully  protrayed,  and 
many  assume  that  whatever  normal  Jewish  life  might  have  beeiy  potentially, 
the  constant  incursions  of  the  Inquisitor  made  it  abnormal.  It  should  be 
remembered,  however,  that  the  Inquisition  was  legally  institutec|jfroli]y  in  a 
few  European  countries,  and  even  there  had  no  jurisdiction  ovep'professing 
Jews,  beyond  censoring  Hebrew  books.  Therefore,  far  from  being  a  special 
prey  of  the  Inquisition,  Jews  belonged  to  a  small,  privileged  group  which 
had  virtual  immunity  from  its  operations. 

In  the  eyes  of  a  contemporary  European,  the  Inquisition  was  no  more 
than  an  ordinary  court  of  justice,  proceeding  along  the  ordinary  lines  of 
criminal  prosecution  in  cases  of  capital  crime.  Apostasy  from  Christianity, 
by  an  old  law  of  Church  and  State,  was  punishable  by  death.  To  the  re- 
ligious conscience  of  the  Western  man  it  seemed  to  be  a  holy  task  to  burn  the 
body  of  such  a  criminal  in  order  to  save  his  soul.  According  to  the  interpre- 
tation of  Canon  Law  prevailing  throughout  the  Renaissance,  Maranos 
(secret  Jews)  were  regarded  as  apostates.  True,  the  highest  Church  author- 
ities taught  that  enforced  baptism  was  criminal,  but  most  of  them  understood 
by  force  real  physical  compulsion,  the  vis  absoluta  of  the  old  Romans,  and  in 
this  sense  the  baptism  of  few  Maranos  could  be  viewed  as  enforced,  even 
though  a  strong  vis  compulsiva  existed  in  the  menace  of  deprivation  of  for- 
tune and  expulsion.  Furthermore,  many  authorities  contended  that  once 
baptism  occurred,  even  by  compulsion,  for  the  neophyte  to  return  to  his 
former  faith  would  be  apostasy.  (If  the  sixteenth  century  Popes  permitted 
Maranos  to  return  to  Judaism  in  Rome  itself,  theirs  was  certainly  a  laxer 
attitude  than  that  of  earlier  and  later  church  teachers  and  jurists.)  At  least 
in  pure  legal  theory,  then,  the  Maranos  were  apostates.  They  were,  there- 
fore, subject  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Inquisition,  and  the  governments  of 
Spain  and  Portugal  were  acting  with  strict  legality  in  applying  to  them  the 
strict  interpretation  of  laws  concerning  apostasy. 

As  to  the  horrible  means  of  procedure  depicted  with  such  vividness  in 
the  classic  histories  of  Jewry,  we  must  say  again,  with  no  effort  to  justify  but 
in  an  effort  to  understand,  that  they  were  not  extraordinary  for  their  times. 
The  "Inquisition"  was  a  characteristic  form  of  legal  procedure,  prevailing  in 
civil  as  well  as  ecclesiastical  courts,  in  which  the  judge  was  at  the  same  time 


GHETTO  AND  EMANCIPATION 


7 


prosecutor  and  attorney  for  the  defendant.  The  use  of  torture  was  based 
upon  the  belief  that  circumstantial  evidence  is  insufficient,  and  that  a  con- 
fession must  therefore  be  extorted.  Many  also  believed  that  such  bodily 
sufferings  were  salutary  for  the  soul.  Such  principles  are  shocking  to  the 
modern  mind,  but  in  a  period  of  such  draconic  secular  law  as  the  Constitutio 
Criminalis  Carolina,  issued  by  the  enlightened  ruler  of  Germany,  Spain,  the 
Netherlands  and  all  the  New  World,  they  are  hardly  extraordinary.  Nor  is 
it  surprising  that  Jews  were  tortured  and  killed  in  an  age  when  not  less  than 
40,000  Christian  "witches"  were  burned  because  they  confessed  to  relations 
with  demons.  Regarded  by  itself  or  measured  by  absolute  standards,  the 
position  of  the  Jews  under  the  Inquisition  was  certainly  unenviable.  But 
by  comparative  standards  they  were,  if  anything,  in  a  preferred  position. 
For  if  as  apostates  or  heretics  they  ran  afoul  of  the  Inquisition,  they  were  no 
worse  off  than  Gentile  apostates  or  heretics,  while  as  professing  Jews  they 
were  beyond  its  jurisdiction. 


EGALLY  and  in  theory,  we  have  seen,  the  status  of  the  Jew  was  by  no 


means  an  inferior  one.  But  did  actual  events — persecutions,  riots, 
pogroms,  monetary  extortions — reduce  their  theoretical  legal  privileges  to 
fictions  in  practice?  Even  here  the  traditional  answer  of  Jewish  historians 
does  not  square  with  the  facts. 

First  of  all,  it  is  certainly  significant  that  despite  minor  attacks,  peri- 
odic pogroms,  and  organized  campaigns  of  conversion,  the  numbers  of 
Jewry  during  the  last  centuries  preceding  Emancipation  increased  much 
more  rapidly  than  the  Gentile  population.*  The  Jewish  population  in  the 
middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  probably  did  not  exceed  650,000  out  of 
the  more  than  100,000,000  inhabitants  in  Europe.  In  1900  the  Jewish  popu- 
lation of  Europe  exceeded  8,500,000  while  the  general  population  was  about 
400,000,000.  That  is,  the  Jewish  rate  of  increase  from  1650  down  to  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  (when  the  mass  of  Jewry  was  still 
unemancipated)  f  was  three  times  the  rate  of  Gentile  increase.  Further- 
more, in  the  same  period  European  Jewry  built  the  great  American 
center. 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  analyze  in  some  detail  the  population  increase 
previous  to  the  Emancipation.    From  1650  to  1789,  when  no  Jews  were  yet 

*  Pre-Revolutionary  population  figures  given  here  are  by  no  means  certain.  I  arrived  at  them  after 
a  careful  study  of  all  available  source  material.  It  is  impossible,  of  course,  to  give  these  sources  here  or 
to  explain  the  methods  of  textual  criticism  and  synthesis  used  in  arriving  at  the  conclusions.  It  has  long 
been  apparent,  however,  that  figures  given  by  our  classic  histories  are  far  from  reasonably  exact,  which  is 
all  that  mine  pretend  to  be. 

t  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Emancipation  did  not  come  to  Russia,  Roumania  or  Turkey  until 
the  present  century,  while  in  Austria  (including  the  Jewish  masses  of  Galicia  and  Hungary)  it  postdates 


II 


1867. 


8 


THE  MENORAH  JOURNAL 


emancipated,  the  Jewish  population  increased  from  650,000  to  1,700,000,  or 
more  than  160  per  cent,  while  the  European  general  population  rOse  from 
100,000,000  to  177,000,000,  an  increase  of  only  77  per  cent.  During  the 
period  1789-1848,  when  only  the  Jews  of  France  and  Holland  (less  than  5 
per  cent  of  all  European  Jewry)  were  emancipated,  the  Jewish  population 
increased  from  1,700,000  to  3,700,000,  or  about  120  per  cent.  In  the  same 
period  the  general  population  increased  only  40  per  cent.  Even  more  amaz- 
ing are  the  figures  for  France  and  Holland  themselves.  The  chief  Jewish 
settlement  in  France  (Alsace)  increased  from  3,300  in  1700  (pre-Emancipa- 
tion)  to  26,000  in  1791  (year  of  the  Emancipation),  or  about  700  per  cent, 
while  in  the  six  decades  following  1791  their  number  rose  only  to  about 
40,000,  an  increase  of  less  than  50  per  cent.  In  Holland  the  Jewish  settle- 
ment started  in  the  sixteenth  century,  developed  rapidly  during  the  next 
200  years,  and  when  Emancipation  came  there  were  about  50,000  Jews  in  the 
country.  During  the  first  decades  of  the  Emancipation  the  general  popu- 
lation of  Holland  rose  from  1,882,000  (1805)  to  2,640,000  (1830),  while  the 
Jewish  population  decreased  about  20  per  cent.  Only  about  1840  did  it 
again  touch  the  previous  high  figure  of  50,000.  As  for  Russia,  Roumania, 
Austria  and  Turkey,  to  which  Emancipation  came  late,  there  was  a  great 
increase  in  the  Jewish  populations  century  after  century.  Is  it  not  clear 
then  that,  despite  the  fact  that  pre-Revolutionary  Jewry  suffered  massacres 
and  other  sanguinary  persecutions,  the  population  increase  went  on  at  least 
as  rapidly  before  Emancipation  as  after? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  a  comparison  between  the  loss  of  life  by  violence  in 
the  two  eras — pre-  and  post-Emancipation — would  probably  show  little  im- 
provement since  the  French  Revolution.  Between  Chmielnicki  and  Hu- 
man, the  two  great  pogrom  movements  of  earlier  East  European  Jewish 
history,  more  than  a  century  intervened,  whereas  three  major  pogrom  waves 
have  swept  Eastern  Europe  between  1880  and  1920,  despite  the  coming  of 
Emancipation.  And  if  the  Emancipation  era  did  not  relieve  the  Jew  of 
pogroms,  it  did  burden  him  in  addition  with  the  obligation  of  military  service, 
from  which  (except  in  rare  and  temporary  situations  of  abnormal  character) 
he  had  always  been  free.  During  the  continuous  wars  of  the  sixteenth,, 
seventeenth,  and  eighteenth  centuries,  when  even  the  non-combatant 
Christian  felt  the  curse  of  religious  conflict,  the  Jews  were  neutral  and  suf- 
fered few  losses.  If  they  had  been  combatants  they  might  have  lost  more 
than  in  all  the  pogroms.* 


*  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  sixteenth  century  knew  altogether  twenty-five  years,  the  seven- 
teenth only  twenty-one  years,  without  big  international  conflagrations,  not  to  speak  of  smaller  wars. 
What  the  effects  of  those  wars  were  upon  the  numbers  of  the  population  even  in  such  a  rich  country  as 
France,  the  leading  empire  of  the  world  at  that  time,  we  see  best  in  a  short  statement  like  this:  "I  esti- 
mate," says  Hippolyte  Taine,  "that  in  1715  more  than  one-third  of  the  population,  six  millions,  perished 
of  hunger  and  of  destitution." 


GHETTO  AND  EMANCIPATION 


9 


HAT  of  the  economic  situation  of  the  Jew?    Despite  all  the  restrictions 


™  ~  placed  on  his  activities,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  average 
Jewish  income  much  surpassed  the  average  Christian  income  in  pre-R evolu- 
tionary times.  This  is  hard  to  prove,  and  certainly  excessive  wealth  was 
rare  except  among  high  nobles  and  clergy.  But  is  it  not  remarkable  that 
the  most  typical  Ghetto  in  the  world,  the  Frankfort  Judengasse,  produced 
in  the  pre-Emancipation  period  the  greatest  banking  house  of  history?  And 
even  before  Rothschild's  day,  such  Central  European  Hofjuden  as  the  Op- 
penheimers  and  Wertheimers,  and  such  West  European  bankers  as  the 
Pintos,  Modonas  and  others,  were  not  far  behind  rich  Christians  in  their 
financial  power. 

Paradoxical  as  it  may  seem,  the  very  restrictive  legislation  proved  in  the 
long  run  highly  beneficial  to  Jewish  economic  development.  It  forced  them 
into  the  money  trade,  and  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  trained  them  in  indi- 
vidual enterprise  without  guild  backing,  compelled  them  to  set  up  wide  inter- 
national contacts  (the  banking  house  of  Lopez  was  established  by  five  broth- 
ers in  Lisbon,  Toulouse,  Bordeaux,  Antwerp  and  London),  and  equipped 
them  with  vast  sums  of  ready  cash.  With  the  dawn  of  early  capitalism, 
and  the  need  for  ready  money  for  the  new  manufactures  and  international 
trading  ventures,  the  Jew  fitted  readily  into  the  new  economic  structure. 
One  need  not  accept  Sombart's  exaggerations  to  see  that  the  Jew  had  an 
extraordinarily  large  share  in  the  development  of  early  capitalism,  and 
received  corresponding  benefits.  For  several  hundred  years  before  the 
Emancipation  many  individual  Jews  were  to  profit  from  the  old  restriction 
which  had  trained  them  in  money  economy,  and  some  of  those  profits  were 
to  seep  down  to  the  Jewish  mass. 

There  were,  of  course,  many  impoverished  Jews,  particularly  in  Eastern 
Europe.  But  there  were  not  so  many  of  them,  even  relatively,  as  there 
were  poor  peasants.  Their  standard  of  life  was  everywhere  higher  than  that 
of  the  majority  of  the  populace.  Particularly  in  Western  and  Central 
Europe  the  frequent  complaints  about  the  extravagance  of  some  Jews,  and 
the  luxury  laws  of  certain  large  Jewish  communities,  indicate  a  degree  of 
well-being  which  is  surprising.  Furthermore,  there  existed  in  the  Jewish 
corporations  numerous  relief  agencies,  a  whole  system  of  social  insurance 
against  need,  in  startling  contrast  to  the  often  exposed  and  defenseless 
situation  of  the  mass  of  the  population. 

Compared  with  these  advantages,  social  exclusion  from  the  Gentile 
world  was  hardly  a  calamity.  Indeed,  to  most  Jews  it  was  welcome,  and 
the  Ghetto  found  warm  champions  in  every  age.  There  the  Jews  might  live 
in  comparative  peace,  interrupted  less  by  pogroms  than  were  peasants  by 
wars,  engaged  in  finance  and  trade  at  least  as  profitable  as  most  urban  occu- 
pations, free  to  worship,  and  subject  to  the  Inquisition  only  in  extreme  situa- 


R: 


10 


THE  MENORAH  JOURNAL 


tions  (as  after  the  enforced  baptisms  in  Spain  and  Portugal) .    They  had  no 
political  rights,  of  course,  but  except  for  nobles  and  clergy  no  one  did. 

Ill 

T7^7"HEN  the  modern  State  came  into  being  and  set  out  to  destroy  the 
*  *  medieval  corporations  and  estates  and  to  build  a  new  citizenship,  it 
could  no  longer  suffer  the  existence  of  an  autonomous  Jewish  corporation. 
Sooner  or  later  it  had  to  give  to  the  Jews  equal  rights  in  civil  and  public  law 
and  to  impose  upon  them  equal  duties  in  turn.  After  the  French  Revolution 
one  state  after  the  other  abrogated  their  economic  disabilities,  and  granted 
them  full  freedom  of  activity.  Finally  they  opened  public  offices,  elective 
and  appointive,  to  Jews,  and  made  them  citizens  with  "equal  rights." 

Emancipation  was  a  necessity  even  more  for  the  modern  State  than  for 
Jewry;  the  Jew's  medieval  status  was  anachronistic  and  had  to  go.  Left  to 
themselves,  the  Jews  might  for  long  have  clung  to  their  corporate  existence. 
For  Emancipation  meant  losses  as  well  as  gains  for  Jewry. 

Equal  rights  meant  equal  duties,  and  the  Jew  now  found  himself  subject 
to  military  service.  Political  equality  also  meant  the  dissolution  of  the 
autonomous  communal  organization:  the  Jews  were  no  longer  to  be  a  nation 
within  a  nation;  they  were  to  be  thought  of  and  to  think  of  themselves  as 
individuals  connected  only  by  ties  of  creed — Frenchmen,  Germans,  English- 
men of  the  Jewish  "Confession."  This  meant  that  politically,  culturally 
and  socially  the  Jew  was  to  be  absorbed  into  the  dominant  national  group. 
Eventually,  it  was  hoped,  his  assimilation  would  be  complete. 

In  the  face  of  Emancipation  traditional  Jewish  ideology  underwent 
great  revision.  The  concept  of  the  inseparability  of  nationality  and  re-  , 
ligion — which  had  been  increasingly  abandoned  in  Europe  after  the  bloody 
Wars  of  Religion — had  persisted  in  Judaism  down  to  the  Revolution,  and 
after.  Now  the  theory  was  put  forth  that  the  Jewish  religion — which  the 
Jew  was  permitted  to  keep — must  be  stripped  of  all  Jewish  national  ele- 
ments. For  national  elements  were  called  secular,  and  in  secular  matters 
the  Jew  was  to  avow  allegiance  to  the  national  ambitions  and  culture  of  the 
land  in  which  he  lived.  Jewish  Reform  may  be  seen  as  a  gigantic  effort, 
partly  unconscious,  by  many  of  the  best  minds  of  Western  Jewry  to  reduce 
differences  between  Jew  and  Gentile  to  a  slight  matter  of  creed,  at  the  same 
time  adopting  the  Gentile's  definition  of  what  was  properly  a  matter  of 
creed.  The  reality  of  the  living  Jewish  ethnic  organism  was  to  be  pared 
down  to  the  fiction  of  the  Jewish  "Confession."  Jewish  nationality  was  to 
be  declared  dead  and  buried.  Assimilation  via  Reform  was  the  Jewish 
destiny,  as  the  nineteenth  century  European,  Jew  and  non-Jew,  saw  it. 

There  emerged  at  this  point  the  new  Wissenschaft  des  Judentums,  in- 
trinsically connected  with  Reformation  and  Emancipation,  a  movement  of 


GHETTO  AND  EMANCIPATION 


11 


scholars  anxious  to  assist  the  completion  of  the  process  of  emancipation  with 
their  learning.  Confronted  by  the  general  suspicion  in  which  Germany  and 
the  modern  world  in  general  held  the  Jew,  and  convinced  of  the  desirability 
of  complete  emancipation,  they  consciously  or  unconsciously  sought  a  tool 
in  history  and  evolved  this  argument:  "The  Jews  may  be  bad,  but  if  they 
are  it  is  because  of  your  persecution;  change  your  attitude,  welcome  the 
Jews  into  the  modern  State  on  terms  of  perfect  equality,  and  they  will 
become  good."  Ardent  advocates  of  liberalism  and  democracy,  visioning  a 
reformed  society  guided  by  beneficent  rationalism,  believing  religiously 
that  the  world  in  general  and  the  Jews  particularly  could  be  improved  by  an 
extension  of  rights,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  they  found  it  useful  to  take  as  black 
a  view  as  possible  of  pre-Revolutionary  treatment  of  the  Jews.  The  exag- 
gerated historical  picture  of  the  horrors  of  the  "Dark  Ages"  which  we  have 
been  examining  was  the  result. 

This  view  of  the  Jewish  past,  outlined  by  the  earliest  advocates  of 
political  and  social  equality,  was  seized  on  and  elaborated  by  advocates  of 
Jewish  Reform  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Eager  to  widen  the  breach  with 
the  past,  to  demonstrate  a  causal  relation  between  the  treatment  given  the 
Jew  and  his  general  acceptability  and  usefulness  to  society,  Reform  advo- 
cates proclaimed  in  unmeasured  terms  the  wretchedness  of  the  age  that 
preceded  them.  They  explained  Jewish  "peculiarities"  as  results  of  op- 
pression. The  more  radical  expounded  the  idea  that  to  achieve  a  new,  free 
Jewish  religion  based  on  the  Bible,  the  entire  literature  of  the  Diaspora  must 
be  abandoned.  The  Talmud,  which  grew  up  in  the  Diaspora,  did  not  reflect 
Judaism's  innermost  spirit,  they  maintained,  but  was  a  mirror  of  the 
"abnormal  conditions"  in  which  Jews  had  lived. 

At  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  and  in  the  twentieth  century,  this 
view,  originated  by  the  anti-nationalist  leaders  of  Reform,  was  to  find  rein- 
forcement, paradoxically,  from  Zionism.  Zionism  wished  to  reject  the  Dia- 
spora in  toto,  on  the  grounds  that  a  "normal  life"  could  not  be  led  by  Jewry 
elsewhere  than  on  its  own  soil.  So,  notwithstanding  their  profound  differ- 
ences, Zionism  and  Reform  both  found  that  their  positions  were  best  sup- 
ported by  that  view  of  history  which  held  that  before  the  Revolution 
European  Jewry  had  lived  in  extreme  wretchedness.  They  differed  only  in 
that  the  Zionists  denounced  the  post-Revolutionary  period  as  equally  bad. 

IT  should  be  pointed  out  at  once  that  this  conception  of  modern  Jewish 
history  is  indispensable  neither  to  Reform  nor  to  Zionism.  Indeed,  each 
has  begun  to  shift  its  ground.  Particularly  among  the  younger  intellectual 
leaders  of  national  Judaism  one  discovers  a  note  of  romantic  longing  towards 
the  Jewish  Ghetto,  its  life,  and  its  culture.  In  literature,  the  revival  of 
Chassidism,  at  least  as  a  cultural  force,  in  the  writings  of  Martin  Buber, 


12 


THE  MENORAH  JOURNAL 


Peretz,  Berditchevsky  and  others,  represents  the  new  tendency.  The 
establishment  of  national  Jewish  minorities  in  Eastern  Europe  has  done 
much  to  reverse  former  animosity  to  Ghetto  ideas  of  Jewish  self-govern- 
ment. As  for  Reform,  strong  wings  of  the  movement  in  America  and  Ger- 
many endeavor  to  reconcile  it  with  Zionism.  Even  those  who  do  not  fully 
adopt  Zionist  ideology  have  become  far  less  antagonistic  to  Hebrew  culture 
than  were  their  forerunners  in  the  Sturm  und  Drang  period  of  Reform.  Thus 
medieval  Jewish  life  takes  on  new  values  for  Reform,  and  the  old  need  for 
rejection  of  all  that  preceded  the  Emancipation  disappears. 

Such  revaluations  of  the  Middle  Ages  are  part,  perhaps,  of  a  general 
modern  tendency  in  historical  studies,  reflecting  changes  in  our  modern 
outlook.  Liberal  laissez  faire  is  being  more  and  more  supplanted  by  a  sys- 
tem of  great  trusts,  protectionism,  Fascism,  Sovietism.  Growing  dissatis- 
faction with  democracy  and  parliamentarianism  has  brought  about  a 
movement  back  to  a  modified  medievalism.  This  is  a  medievalism  on  a 
higher  plane,  perhaps,  but  a  medievalism  just  the  same,  of  organization, 
standardization,  and  regulation. 

That  Reform  and  Zionism  have  both  begun,  though  timidly  and  slowly, 
to  reconsider  the  Jewish  Middle  Ages  is  encouraging.  The  future  will  cer- 
tainly not  see  a  reversal  toward  an  obsolete  and  impossible  corporational 
system.  With  other  national  minorities  the  Jews  claimed  and  are  claiming, 
not  without  success,  the  equilibrium  between  their  full  rights  as  citizens  and 
the  special  minority  rights  they  think  necessary  to  protect  their  living  nation- 
al organism  from  destruction  and  absorption  by  the  majority,  a  process  that 
has  often  proved  to  be  harmful  both  for  the  absorber  and  the  absorbed. 

At  any  rate,  it  is  clear  that  Emancipation  has  not  brought  the  Golden 
Age.  While  Emancipation  has  meant  a  reduction  of  ancient  evils,  and 
while  its  balance  sheet  for  the  world  at  large  as  well  as  for  the  Jews  is  favor- 
able, it  is  not  completely  clear  of  debits.  Certainly  its  belief  in  the  efficacy 
of  a  process  of  complete  assimilation  has  been  proved  untenable.  Auton- 
omy as  well  as  equality  must  be  given  its  place  in  the  modern  State,  and 
much  time  must  pass  before  these  two  principles  will  be  fully  harmonized 
and  balanced.  Perhaps  the  chief  task  of  this  and  future  generations  is  to 
attain  that  harmony  and  balance.  Surely  it  is  time  to  break  with  the 
lachrymose  theory  of  pre-Revolutionary  woe,  and  to  adopt  a  view  more  in 
accord  with  historic  truth. 


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